Johnson

It is one thing to inherit a broken economy; it is a far more devastating affair to worsen it with the speed and confidence of a man who thinks noise is strategy. On 29 May, 2023, when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took over the reins of Nigeria’s battered ship, the more optimistic among us clung to the possibility that a Lagos-proven manager had come to steady the vessel. Two years later, the joke now runs that at least Buhari took eight years to grind the poor to paste – this one used under 24 months.  

  Let it be said without fear or favour: we were already suffering. The Buhari administration had administered a cocktail of economic coma and fiscal hallucination, with debt overhangs, subsidy schizophrenia, and a knack for appointing square pegs to police circular holes. By 2023, public outcry over his profligacy and aloofness had risen like heat from the Sahara. We thought we’d hit rock bottom. We didn’t realise someone else had a drilling machine. Nigerians didn’t expect magic. They only hoped for a chance to breathe, perhaps a less erratic pulse in the cost of living. What they got instead was a full-frontal collision with an economic philosophy that believes pain is the first sign of progress.

  Within hours of his inauguration, President Tinubu boldly declared that “subsidy is gone.” Just like that. No transition plan, no safety net, no cushioning structure for the masses. Overnight, the price of petrol doubled, then tripled, as transporters adjusted to new realities, traders passed the burden on to buyers, and the market spun into a chaos that economists would later call “the predictable turbulence of reform.” To the ordinary man, it was the beginning of an unending nightmare. If Buhari brought Nigerians to their knees, Tinubu appears determined to teach them how to crawl.

  In two short years, the cost of living has mutated from burdensome to catastrophic. Market women now calculate prices with a calculator, a prayer, and a blood pressure monitor. Children are withdrawn from private schools to public ones, only to find the latter equally struggling – no teachers, no chairs, and sometimes no classrooms. The naira, floated in the same carefree spirit that launched the subsidy removal, did not just sink – it dissolved. From ₦460/$ before Tinubu to over ₦1,600/$ at its peak in 2024, the currency has become a certified punchline in local and foreign exchange circles. A teacher earning ₦70,000 monthly in 2022 had some measure of dignity; today, that same amount buys shame in bulk.

Every metric of public welfare is in retreat. Electricity tariffs have quadrupled while supply remains epileptic. The same officials who lecture citizens on sacrifice arrive meetings in convoys of SUVs guzzling petrol that taxpayers subsidise indirectly through government allocations. The minimum wage, still locked in a decades-old time capsule, barely competes with the price of a 25kg bag of rice. The more the government talks about reforms, the less food there is in the kitchen. Every policy pronouncement is greeted not with applause but with anxiety – because the last ten announcements brought nothing but hunger, bills, and confusion.

Tinubu’s economic team – technocrats, bankers, and investment charmers – may have designed a blueprint to attract foreign capital, stabilise macroeconomic indices, and boost investor confidence. But it has become painfully clear that the blueprint was photocopied from foreign models with no regard for Nigerian peculiarities. The economy cannot be stabilised by theories that ignore the realities of the man who sells recharge cards in Iyana Ipaja or the single mother running three jobs just to buy cooking gas. Structural adjustments without structural compassion only breed structural chaos.

  Meanwhile, the administration continues to celebrate milestones – floating the naira, harmonising FX windows, introducing tax reforms, securing billions in pledges from international investors. On paper, it all looks impressive. But in the markets, schools, and hospitals where Nigerians live real lives, there is no sign of this progress. Garri, that reliable barometer of economic distress, now shares shelf space with imported pasta in price. Even tomatoes, tatashe, peppers have grown wings. Families now share meat like national cake, two slices per Sunday meal. Some have eliminated it altogether. Yet, in the corridors of power, the mood remains jubilant.

  The most unforgivable irony is that while the populace battles with despair, the political elite have shifted their gaze to 2027. Power play, zoning arithmetic, factional alignments, party loyalty tests – these now dominate public discourse from Abuja to state capitals. Governance has taken a back seat to politicking. New appointees are weighed not by competence but by electoral usefulness. Budgets are drafted with eyes on vote banks. Projects are announced with 2027 hashtags. It is business as usual, except business is booming only for the few who control public coffers.

 There is no respite in sight. Social safety nets are mere headlines. Palliatives, once a stop-gap, have become a mockery – bags of rice distributed like alms to citizens whose taxes sustain the luxury lifestyles of their oppressors. Hospitals lack basic drugs. Universities, choked by strikes and underfunding, are producing graduates who will queue endlessly for jobs that don’t exist. Security remains fragile. Bandits still conduct operations with impunity. In some rural areas, the government exists only on NTA news bulletins.

The Nigerian spirit – often romanticised as resilient – is simply weary. People are not coping. They are adapting in desperation. Youths have embraced migration as ambition. Betting shops are more frequented than libraries. Spiritual houses overflow with supplicants seeking divine exemptions from economic reality. The nation is not surviving on policy. It is staggering on instinct, side hustles, miracle alerts, and the occasional intervention from a relative abroad. And yet, the noise from the top persists: that we are “on course.”

 It must be said, plainly and without varnish, that the true measure of leadership is not in attending summits or quoting GDP figures on primetime television. It is not in the number of foreign trips, nor in the size of delegations that follow ministers to conferences in Dubai or Brussels. It is in the price of bread in the market. It is in whether a man who earns a minimum wage can feed his family without contemplating crime. It is in the security of rural farmers, the dignity of teachers, and the hopefulness of young graduates. It is in the sense of belonging that every citizen should feel, not just during election seasons, but in everyday transactions with their nation.

 If two years of bold economic transformation has left the majority of Nigerians poorer, angrier, and more anxious, then what exactly are we celebrating? If the prize of reform is unending hunger, unlivable wages, and an elite class floating in opulence while the majority sink in despair, then it becomes urgent to ask – at what point does reform become ruinous? At what point does change stop meaning progress?

Governments are not elected to dazzle foreign investors or tick IMF compliance boxes. They are elected to serve citizens, to protect livelihoods, and to create an environment where survival is not a full-time occupation. The Tinubu administration must realise that Nigerians are not statistics on a dashboard or props in political theatre. They are humans – wounded by years of unfulfilled promises, exhausted by the sheer audacity of each new wave of suffering dressed up as reform, and increasingly disenchanted with a system that seems allergic to empathy.

Two years on, the applause is fading, the slogans are tired, and the hunger is loud. If the remaining two years continue at this trajectory – deaf to public outcry, blind to market realities, and drunk on the praise of foreign observers – the only thing left to float may be the memory of what it felt like to be a citizen with hope. And in that grim forecast, not even the most eloquent economic adviser can spin prosperity out of poverty, nor craft an election campaign glossy enough to cover the stench of unmet expectations.